How It Ends
by Alhaeron
Summary: Fry survies the events on Planet Pitch Jack and Imam make their way to New Mecca. Riddick's life ends. Takes place after Pitch Black and during Dark Fury, then spins out of canon from there. No character death.


**How It Ends**

**Alhaeron**

**Disclaimer: **Yes, I don't own Riddick, Fry, Jack or Imam; they belong to Universal. Work of fiction, yadda yadda, not for profit. You get the picture

**Author's Note: **After promising myself I wasn't going to write fanfic again, I got bitten by a plot bunny. **Hard. **And so here I am, when I should be working on the _real _stuff—but I just can't help it. Still, I may not finish this thing. Not making any promises. So read and enjoy while it lasts… Starts at the very end of _Pitch Black_, continues through _Dark Fury, _and then spins out of canon for the Riddickverse. Basic premise? Fry survives.

**Chapter One: How It Started**

He leaned in, his face inches away from hers—wasn't sure what he was planning to do, except he knew that she was beautiful, her hair plastered down to her forehead by sweat and rain, traces of the goop from the glow-worms on her hands, backlit by the shining lights of the skiff—but he knew exactly what he needed to do when he heard the flap of leathery wings zooming in. He kicked his legs out from under himself and tripped her in the process, and they landed in the mud. The monster soared right over them with an offended howl, and then with a supreme effort he forced himself up—blood spilled over the top of his boot and his leg felt like something had it in its jaws and was chewing on it—and he dragged her with him. Then she recovered from her shock and they were both running full-tilt for the skiff. He slammed the button to close the ramp as he passed, and then collapsed on the floor.

He couldn't get up. He had to get up. He couldn't get up, and pain burned in his leg, but urgency burned in his head—and he was up, then, with enough strength to push Jack away from the pilot's chair and take the controls himself. The flying uglies filled the windshield, tapping on it, their claws scraping it with a sound that set his teeth on edge. He let them come, let them cover the skiff, listened to their feet romping up and down on the roof. "Riddick, what the hell—will you hurry up—." He made sure they were all over the place, and then he threw the thrusters into drive, roasting at least fifty of the fuckers, and they were headed for outer space, for the shipping lanes, for…whatever came next. He made a point of not thinking about that part.

As soon as he was sure they were on course and they had enough fuel to meet that course, he turned his chair to face the people in the skiff. Four of them—a holy man, a girl with a shaved head, a space pilot. Imam. Jack. Fry. And him: Riddick. Out of over ten people there were four alive. The only ones left. The only ones to have left that…hell of darkness. He never thought he'd come to hate darkness, but he had managed it. And now…

"You need medical attention," said Fry, and suddenly he remembered his leg. He could have growled at her—he had actually forgotten, and the pain had gone away. But now he had to admit she had a point—it was taking all of his self-control not to double over and clutch at his wound, groaning.

"There's probably a med kit somewhere," he forced himself to grit out. She nodded, and he saw in her eyes that she knew what he had been planning, before the leathery-winged avian had come between them. But then she was getting up from the shotgun seat, and Jack was taking her place.

"So what are we going to do when a ship comes along?" the kid said. What was it about these people, reminding him about things he didn't want to think about? All he wanted was sleep…and for the pain in his neck to abate. Belatedly he realized he'd just gotten shot full of tranquilizer. _Damn_, he must have lost a lot of blood.

"Never do that again," he said, voice gravelly, but fuzzy with the fast-acting drug. He was ignored, and he fought the tranq to no avail as they unfolded a bed from the wall. _One bed…somebody's going to have to share, _he thought as they bundled him onto it. _And I'm not sharing with Imam or the kid. Bet they snore. _

When he woke up, lights were shining through the windshield that made him wince and reach for his goggles…which were of course not on his face. That's what he hated most about being forced to go sleep—people moved things, rearranged things without telling him, and he could be in a totally different situation than when he fell asleep. He liked to see the progression of things—it helped him to anticipate what would happen next, given what he knew about the people around him and what they had done before. He was very rarely surprised.

It became clear to his tranq-fogged brain that there was a ship outside—a big one, if his eyes were to be believed. It probably had them on a tug-line, the way the skiff was rattling around now—good thing, too, because they were going to run out of air soon, and they didn't have any food.

Fry pressed the hail button and the ship responded by crackling a burst of static on the radio. Riddick listened, feeling like he'd been plastered to the bed, as Fry described their situation, where they'd been, who they were. _If she says the name Riddick, _he mused drowsily, _I'll know she's left her brains on that planet. _But she didn't. After looking at him cautiously for a moment, she said, "And Johns. Bounty hunter." After a pause, the disembodied voice from the ship crackled, "…kay…ch…out…co…aboard…"

"Thanks," Fry said, then turned to the rest of them. "All right, we've got a berth. We just need to hope they haven't been looking too closely at the wanted posters or the bulletins lately." Riddick struggled into a sitting position, and snorted weakly.

"_That's _likely."

"Shut up. We need to act shell-shocked, scared, afraid…they say they're a merchant vessel but I really doubt it." Jack muttered something about not all of that being acting, then quieted when Imam shot her a look.

"What you really want to say is that we need to be prepared to fight our way out of there," Riddick said. "Do we have any weapons? Glow-worms don't count." Fry shook her head.

"No, and I really hope we _don't _need to fight. Or at least we get a bed and a bath before we have to." Riddick stifled a couple of very choice comments that would probably lead to him being forced to go to sleep again if he said them aloud—and besides, Jack didn't need to be picking anything more up from him. She'd already shaved her head for God's sake. _Whoa, whoa, whoa. When _did _I start watching my mouth? _"Part of you still wants to join the human race," Fry's voice said to him out of the past, and he shook it off. Past, future—not now. The present was all that mattered.

"I've said you're bed-bound," Fry said, cutting through his thoughts, "so you might as well lie down. As for you, Jack, you're still a boy. Sorry—I just didn't feel like explaining how you came to the conclusion that a shaved head was sexy—."

"Hey," Riddick managed weakly. The bed was already working its magic and turning him into Jell-O. Very sleepy Jell-O. Okay, maybe not all of the tranq was out of his system. They ignored him again, talking in voices that were steadily slower and slower and deeper and deeper…

Riddick woke up on a stretcher. Strange kind of stretcher, though—not particularly comfortable, and it had pretty tight bands around his chest and neck and thighs, with emphasis on keeping his arms clamped to his sides. Plus it was being _rolled_, not carried horizontally…he could have groaned. Fry, Jack and Imam were taking shape out of the darkness that had previously been all he could see, and they were wearing a whole lot of iron. Whoever had them wasn't taking any chances. "I take it we've been captured for some reason," he said, pleased that his voice wasn't particularly thick. He wasn't sure whether they were keeping up the pretext of him being 'Johns' any more, but he didn't want to take any chances if they were.

"They know who you are," Fry said, looking at him, and he saw that her left eye, the one to his far side, was blacked impressively. He swallowed a surge of anger that concerned and confused him, and said, "Not really surprising."

"Yeah. Just how long is your rap sheet, anyway?" she snapped. "They were fairly cooing over you when they unloaded you."

"They might not have had the chance if I hadn't been doped," he said, his anger redirecting itself, at least partially. "Lesson number one about life in general: do _not _drug the only chance you may have of escaping a bad situation."

"Oh—you're the only chance?" she said, voice rife with skeptical laughter. "Sure. You know what, Riddick? I didn't have to go back for you, on Pitch. I could have left you, and we'd be in the same spot—only we would be in comfortable beds now, because we wouldn't be the 'crew' of an escaped convict with a rap sheet like a comet tail."

"You couldn't," he said quietly. "You couldn't have left me."

"Oh? And why not?" she said, clearly at the end of her tether; her voice cracked, and he wondered just how long she'd been awake. It made him feel…almost guilty, because he'd been completely sacked out on what looked like their only bed.

"Because you're you," he said, and knew it was true. "You don't leave people behind." He quirked a very small smile. "That's my job."

"You didn't leave us," Jack said from his other side, in a very quiet voice. "You could have left us too—probably should've—but you didn't." Ah, there was the damn kid again—reminding him of what he didn't want to remember. No past, no future. That was him. Just the present.

He looked up, all around him, trying to gauge where he was. Pretty big ship, he was sure—they were in a cavernous hallway. Along the walls were canisters of what looked like…humans. "The hell…" he whispered. Imam, hearing him, leaned in close.

"It is a plantation operation. The ship makes port every six months, maybe even a year, and picks up as many mercs as it can find. Freezes them; thaws them when it has need of them."

"And on the other side," murmured Riddick, "are the convicts." Bounty hunters. This was even better than he'd thought.

"This is where we get off," said one of the mercs guarding them. Jack started to carry on and scream as the guards tugged her off to the side and led Riddick to an elevator.

"Wait!" Fry shouted suddenly, and Riddick looked at her, a warning in his eyes. "He's injured. He needs proper medical attention before…"

"Where?" one of the mercs snarled. "I don't see no wound."

"Right leg," said Fry. Riddick glared at her. This was embarrassing. The merc pulled up Riddick's pants leg to expose a red-soaked bandage; the hired guns all winced.

"Okay," he said finally. "I'll radio Junner and see if we should get him to the infirmary. I'm pretty sure…" He plucked a two-way from his belt and said into it, "He's got a sucking wound. Big-ass swipe on the right leg." He listened for a minute, then said, "All right. Sure, boss." Under this cover, Riddick said to Fry, "Who's Junner?"

"Big guy, carries a sword and a blaster. Pasty, black hair—big asshole."

"He the boss around here?" She shook her head.

"There's someone else. And Riddick…" the catch in her voice made him look at her. She seemed stricken, uncomfortable; it made him wonder exactly what he had missed. "She's very interested in you," she said finally. "I don't know exactly why, but…it can't be good."

The guards separated them eventually, taking Riddick to the sick bay and Fry, Imam and Jack down a cell block. They gave him a mild tranq, enough to make him loopy but not enough to take him out, dumped him on a table, and called for a doc. He was vaguely aware of pain in his leg for about half an hour, but the technicolored bubbled floating above his head were far more interesting. Then they dumped him on the chair, chained him up again, and put him on a bed in a cell. By then he was too out of it to do much more than croak to the shadow in the far corner, "Fry…?"

"I'm here, Riddick, but—."

"Shut up!" someone snarled; there was the sound of fist hitting skin, and Riddick made a violent movement, but he was already too far gone.

When Riddick woke next Fry was gone. He wondered if she was dead, or what had happened to the others—but if whoever had them wanted him for something, it would be a better idea for her to keep them as leverage. Riddick alone could probably escape—it would take some doing, but he could probably make it to their skiff, if it hadn't been jettisoned, or steal another ship. But whoever it was knew him better than he liked to admit: he wasn't leaving them behind. He didn't know why—it was a dumbass idea and liable to get them all killed—but he just wasn't. Okay? Fine.

He sat up, and for the first time was able to enjoy being vertical without his head swimming. His stomach rumbled, so a substantial amount of time must have passed—then again, he'd been hungry for a while. He stood, and his leg shook for a minute, but it was just stiff muscles; the lingering throb and occasional sharp snaps of pain were gone. Pretty good for a bounty hunter surgeon. But then again, he was starting to think that maybe this wasn't an ordinary bounty hunter ship. Too big, for one thing. Then the freezing system—who ever had the money for that? This was clearly a racket, not a single crew, but it was a _rich _racket.

So who was running this joint? He clicked through his mental roster of convicts, mercs, hunters and slams, but he couldn't find anything that fit _this _monster. Most of the people he knew were small-time, anyway; hungry to bring him in because they wanted the money, the glory—but none of them had half the brain to think of an operation like _this. _But thing was, if someone was already rich enough to fund it, why would they go to the trouble of catching him? They obviously didn't need the payday; so why take the risk?

At that point the doors slammed open and Riddick became painfully aware of the fact that his gogs were gone. He flinched away from the light and the mercs poured in, binding his hands and bundling him into the chain-chair again. "I can walk by myself," he growled, but someone just said "Shut up!" and there was a bright burst of pain on the side of his head, like a muzzle-flash behind his eyes. Then someone snapped his goggles back on and he opened his eyes to the welcome darkness.

They wheeled him into the doorway of a massive room and let him out, then nudged him into the room with the muzzles of their guns. On his right there appeared a tall man, pasty white with jet-black hair and a long, strangely-cut coat; _must be Junner_, Riddick thought, and wondered where Fry, Jack and Imam were. Junner escorted him down a set of steps that curved around a massive edifice, a tornado-shaped spiral that seemed to be made of shelves held up by life-sized statues of naked men and women, people in perfect shape with savage expressions on their faces. Riddick felt a soft gasp escape his lips at the vastness of the collection, the vastness of the room, the idea that in a ship this much space would be devoted to pure…vanity. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Junner quirk up one corner of his thin lips. Riddick scowled, but as he passed closely by one of the statues he almost stopped short—furious the woman might look, but there was an expression of pleading desperation in her eyes.

They rounded the curve of the spiral and Riddkc saw more statues out on the palatial floor, pretty much the same types as the others but mounted on pedestals with gold plaques, engraved with, presumably, the piece's title and artist's name. He looked closer to one of the statues then, and saw something that made the blood run cold in his veins: _the statues were alive. _He could just tell; there was blood moving in them, but it was…unnaturally sluggish. He stepped closer to one, close enough to read its plaque (_Furya: Killer of Men_, a name that shot cold through him again), and then brought his shackled hands up to touch the statue's tongue. It was…stone, but he felt it move, just the minutest inch, against his hand. He drew back.

And then he heard a door hiss open behind him: turned to look, and felt something metallic and prickly jab into his neck. He dropped to one knee, stifling a snarl of pain, and looked up to see Junner standing by, holding an injector and wearing a very smug expression. "All right," Riddick said slowly, "now you have my attention."

"A necessary precaution, I assure you," said a woman's voice from behind him, and he turned to see a tall, excruciatingly thin lady on the far side of middle age, wearing a dress that showed far more than anyone at her age had any business doing. "You attempt anything…uncivilized, killing me for instance, and I blow the charge Junner's just implanted in your neck." Riddick cracked his knuckles.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Antonia Chillingsworth. Welcome to the Kublah-Khan." Riddick quirked his head in acknowledgement; then, never one to beat around the bush, skipped straight to the point.

"What am I here for?" She smiled. Chillingly. Funny how names often fit people. His name fit him because it was short and sharp in the mouth, like a knife blade; she was like ice.

"Because you are a wanted man, Mr. Riddick." He snorted.

"You don't need to tell me that. And you can lose the mister; it's just Riddick. What I want to know is why we're not making ion trails for the nearest slam where you can collect your pay. But then again, I doubt you need it." She smiled. What was with the smiling? Was it supposed to be creepy?

"You are correct. You are here, Mr. Riddick, because you are an artist." Well, that threw him for a loop.

"Afraid not. I failed Prison Etchings 101." She gestured widely then, a sweep of her arm casually encompassing the entire vast hall. Riddick kept his eyes on her. She was one to watch, not just because she had the remote control that could separate his head from his neck if he so much as sneezed out of line.

"Look around you, Mr. Riddick." Yeah, she was clearly doing that to annoy him. "You enjoy my collection?"

"They're great," he said sharply. "Very lifelike."

"Ah, but they are alive!" she said, with the air of someone revealing the trap door. "Each lives and breathes, but through our revolutionary technology they are…suspended in time, their molecules slowed down to nearly imperceptible rates. Thus, to blink is a day's work; to move the eyes a week's; to form a word a month's. And yet the brain continues to function as it always did—the soul trapped inside the body." Riddick fought his own body to keep from blanching, but he couldn't suppress a shudder. For a man who valued freedom as he did, who was willing to kill as many people as were necessary to obtain that freedom, this was the ultimate cage, a cage you could never escape from: the cage of one's own body. "Not even death," Chillingsworth was saying, "can release them." _Not even death…_ Suddenly the jaws of the creatures on Pitch were looking like a really cushy offer right now.

"What's so special about them? I mean, these particular ones," Riddick said, voice especially deep to mask its trembling. She laughed.

"They are priceless! Each at one time the most wanted man or woman in the universe. The number of lives ended at the hands of those living and breathing in this room are incalculable." Who had turned the air conditioning up? As in, turned it all the way up to "Arctic Wasteland"? Chillingsworth turned from contemplating her collection to stare directly at him, an appraising look as though examining what she thought might be a prime specimen.

"I have been searching for you for years, Mr. Riddick." _I know where this is going…_ "You are the next worthy addition to my collection. I believe you raise its value by nearly two million, counting all of the bounties from all of the planets, as well as the slams. An artist such as you does not deserve to rot for the rest of his days in one slam or another; he must express his gift, and be glorified for it!" As Chillingsworth expounded on the glory of her idea and what she was planning to do to him, most of Riddick's internal voices were screaming, _Run! _But a larger, louder, and far more impressive voice shouted them all down: _BOMB! _His instincts told him to smash Junner over the head with his fists and make a break for it, but there was that death by exploding neck thing…still, he should probably consider it an exit strategy, because he was _not _going to wind up like these bastards…poor was still a little too rich for them, he decided, squinting at a few of the names that he recognized.

"But before we begin, I would like to offer you the opportunity to do something that you have never done. Before, you have killed out of necessity," she said, walking towards a set of steps. Junner propelled him up the steps after her with the muzzle of his gun, and she pressed a button that opened a set of towering red curtains. Behind the curtains was a darkened arena, but Riddick didn't have the chance to push up his goggles before Junner jostled him forward again. Chillingsworth took a seat in a chair next to a table, on which sat a glass of red wine, a box, and something that looked bizarrely like opera glasses. "I would like to witness your masterwork," she said, and then indicated that he should take off his goggles.

He pushed them slowly off his eyes, and saw that the arena was empty except for three massive round globes, on which stood three people chained by the neck to the ceiling of the arena: Fry, Jack and Imam. _Oh, _hell_…_ "Of course, what is a tour de force without a little incentive?" Chillingsworth said, looking up at him and smiling beautifully.


End file.
